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Ukraine is effectively two countries (if not more); the east looks towards Russia and the west looks towards Western Europe. The EU has been meddling in Ukraine for some time, encouraging application for EU membership but being coy about its response. Russia also has a substantial interest in the future…
This expression was apparently first used by Mark Twain, who attributed it to Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British Prime Minister. To quote Mark Twain: “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.” These are appropriate quotes today, where suspicion abounds about the “accuracy” of government statistics. While Chinese statistics…
James Rickards (lawyer,economist, investment banker and author) has written a new book, “The Death of Money”. It is available here. In an interview with Valentin Schmid of Epoch Times (read it here), he considers that the petrodollar will be replaced by another international monetary system, just as the petrodollar…
In July 1944, at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, delegates from all 44 Allied nations involved in World War II sought to define and regulate the international monetary and financial system. In addition to the establishment of a number of global agreements (such as the General…
A few weeks ago I described the relationship between gross metal value in a concentrate and the net percentage of the gross that a seller will actually receive. You can read that article here. Copper is sold in three main forms: refined copper cathode; copper concentrate; and blister copper. A…
Last week Shell announced a USD2 billion write-down of its US shale oil assets and has put its shale assets in Texas up for sale. This follows write-downs by other majors in the shale oil/gas business, such as BHP. These losses have led to a chorus of “I told you so” by shale sceptics.…